Tissue holder tutorial

I have made a couple of tissue holders to give as presents. I think they are cute and practical and a nice little and easy to make, quick gift. So I wanted to make a tutorial and share how I made it with all of you.
This are two tissue holders I made recently:


And here it goes the tutorial:
1. Cut two pieces of fabric, one for the outside and the other for the lining. The dimensions should be 6 inches x 7 inches.


2. With right sides together, sew a 1/4 inch seam around the border leaving 4 inches open in the longer side.


3. Open the seams of the side you left open and iron.


4. Turn right sides out and iron again. To make sure the corners are nice and pointy I use a chopstick to push them out.


5. Fold it with lining side out so that the 2 sides overlap 3/4 inches.


6. Sew it in the sides, this time leaving only 1/8inch seam allowance.Turn around and push corners out again with a chopstick. Iron again and voila! there you have it!

Quilts and so much more

Another week passed with a nice Sunday Meeting. It's our time to share with friends our project's progress, taste delicius food (everybody cooks really good!) and have a great conversation.

Amisha's baby quilt is growing pretty and faster.

Pilar is so happy with her first spider man pijamas
that she made with her new sewing machine.

Ana Clara is finally back from Portugal (and she looks gorgeius!). And next to her is Laurene who showed us her creatives photos albums that she is decorating every month for her 5 year old daughter. WELCOME!!

Tery has a lot of work to do yet, but the quilt is so great as it is...

And look at this cool hat that Flor made from her baby boy.

Gisele, we have no photos of the summer top you made from your old dress, but everybody saw you wearing it this sunday and it's fantastic.

About me, the 'bag girl', I finished a bag (ja, ja, ja!!) that will be a birthday's present for a girlfriend (so it's secret).

Sunday afternoon......working and working!

Our last Sunday meeting was very productive. If I'm not wrong it has been our fullest meeting, we were 10!!

And then, we could see many hands working.

Tery was with us, our teacher, and always we learn new things with her.

And I...kidnaped Carmen and she tought me how to use my new sew machine!!

An other Sunday very productive!!!

Tery with her beautiful big quilt

Camila already has half of the bedspread!!

Camila shows her beautiful yellow bag

Carmen finished her baby quilt too!!

Yanina with her first cushion finished!!

Claudia shows her new bedspread proyect

The socks made by Amisha

Amisha with her baby quilt with orange triangles

My first Pokemon Pillow

Mi 8 year old son -Gabriel- is a Pokemon fun. He loves everything related to this characters.
In my last visit at Joann store, Gabriel and his brother Santiago found this amazing Pokemon fabric; so I spent my 40% off coupon on it to make this pillow.
So let me share with you the hapyness of my child with his new 'made by mom' pillow!!!

Baby quilt is done!... and Meringue Tart recipe

I had finished the Elizabeth baby quilt, she will be born this week, everybody waiting for her ! and she has taken her time....

I liked so much the baby quilt, the colors combination resulted funny and the embroider are not too bad.

In the pictures there are details of appliques: the sun, the butterflies, the flower, the bee.

He terminado la colcha para Elizabeth, ella nacera esta semana, estan todos esperandola y si que se ha hecho esperar!.
Me gusto mucho como quedo la colcha, la combinacion de colores resulto alegre y los bordados no salieron tan mal.
En las fotos se ven los detalles de las aplicaciones: el sol, las mariposas, la flor, la abeja.

And the promise...the Meringue Tart recipe!

Meringue Tart

5 egg white
1 cup sugar (250 grs)
5 tbsp. sugar powder (confectioners’ sugar)
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. pure corn starch

Beat the egg white until it is hard. Add the sugars’ cup, by tbsp. When this is good incorporated, add baking powder, corn starch and sugar powder, slowly, with wood spoon.
Prepare the cake pan, with butter in the base and put a circle of paper to fit the base of the pan. Above this, put the meringue, without touching the pan on the borders.
Preheat the oven to 325 F and bake the meringue for 5 minutes at this temperature and then, low the temperature at 200 F and bake whit oven a little open (put a spoon in the oven door). This is for 50 minutes else.

The cream is a little box of heavy cream, beat to hard and put a 1 tbsp. of sugar and 1 tbsp. of vanilla.

When the meringue is cold, put above the cream and above this pieces of strawberry or raspberries, to covering the surface. Maintain refrigerated.

If you do other meringue, put over this and you have a meringue cake that is bigger when you need for more people.

Y lo prometido... la receta de la Tarta de Merengue!

Tarta de Merengue

5 claras de huevo
250 gramos de azucar granulada (1 taza)
5 cucharadas de azucar flor
1/2 cucharadita de polvos de hornear
1/2 cucharadita de chunno

Batir las claras hasta que esten duras, agregar el azucar granulada por cucharada. Cuando el merengue este firme agregar el azucar flor, chunno y polvos de hornear e incorporar suavemente con cuchara de madera.
Preparar un molde, enmantequillar el fondo y poner papel sobre este y los bordes. Poner el merengue sin que toque el papel de la orilla. Poner en horno pre calentado, horno mediano, por 5 minutos, despues de esto bajar la temperatura, bien baja, y abrir la puerta del horno levemente, dejando una abertura con una cuchara entremedio, esto por 50 minutos.

La crema se hace batiendo crema liquida hasta que este firme, poniendole un poquito de azucar y unas gotas de vainilla.
Cuando el merengue este frio, poner encima la crema y sobre este frutillas (fresas) o frambuesas cubriendo toda la superficie. Mantener refrigerado.

Se pueden hacer dos merengues y colocar uno encima de la crema y fruta y te queda una torta (pastel) de merengue mas grande, para cuando necesites para mas gente.

Quilts, pillows, and tons of bags

Yesterday we had a busy quilting/crafting meeting. It is nice when so many of us get together and talk like if we hadn't seen each other in years!
It's amazing how many new projects we have all together! and of course we also have our long big huge projects that keep us entertained for months.
Yanina finished her fish quilt, so cute!


Claudia, the bag girl is making a bag for a friend.

She is also made another one for herlself. She said "this is the first one I have made for ME from scratch!" It is so nice! And it really amazes me where does she find all those colorful fabrics, she says in Walmart but I just don't seem to look with the same kind of eyes! Because I never find them!


And one more for herself. The white circles are pieces of paper that she uses as a guide for quilting.

Yanina is into pillows now. And she likes to make the patchwork part like a puzzle. She had all these tiny pieces that she arranged into 4 flowers that will form the front of a very nice pillow.

And she cut pieces in paper of two new projects. As I said, she is fast!

Gisele made this beautiful quilt some time ago but it still needs to be finished. She decided to work on an old project rather than starting a new one (unlike me that I never finish my projects, well, hardly ever).

Amisha joined us for the first time. Here she was explaining about the quilt she is starting to make. It is simple, just rectangles, but it has many different fabrics in orange and white. It looks really nice.

And Camila was cutting fabrics for her big "storm of the sea" quilt. Here they are admiring Gisele's quilting bag.

As for me I am finishing up a quilt that I cannot show until it's all done and in the hands of its future owner.
And of course we enjoyed delicious food! Pilar made this amzing strawberry merengue pie that she promised to post the recipe soon. Gisele made Bruno's banana cake, also amazing, and also brought some egyptian treats, like baklaba. Amisha also made a delicious banana bread.

Great fun! I am looking forward to next Sunday!

How to make labels

The first craft blog I ever read was Dona Chita, by a Brazilian woman who makes wonderful softies. She calls her softies 'Kokoro' (heart, in Japanese). She makes small little labels for them and I thought it was such a great idea. I decided to make labels for my softies.
Here is what you need:
T-shirt transfer paper (about 9 dollars for 6 sheets at Wall Mart), ribbon, iron and a computer with printer.
Using a graph software, design your label and print on paper to see how it looks and adjust the size, so it matches the size of the ribbon. Once it is the way you want, print on the transfer paper (my printer has a T-shirt transfer mode, that means it prints backwards).



Cut the strips and iron it on the ribbon.


And sew on you softies
 

Great news!

I thought I will just share the good news. Gisele and I won the whipup "whiplash" contest we participated on! Each of us made a bag, then posted it in our respective blogs and sent the entry to whiplash. I was really surprised and happy when I saw that both of us had won. Gisele presented the tutorial on this bag and I presented this cocktail purse. I am so excited and I am looking forward to see what are we going to get on the mail. We will keep you posted!

Once again Sunday fun

Once again we meet last Sunday. And once again we had a good time. I would say that for a change we were quite productive!! We were just 4 but we hadboth projects to show and projects to work on.
Pilar, almost done with her baby quilt showed us all her progress.


Yanina had a bunch of scraps from a lady that makes seminole quilts. They are really amazing pieces, very intricate with many small pieces. This is a style I would like to try one day.


Amazingly she is working on her second quilt already! in two weeks!!! She is learning how to hand quilt and most likely she will come with it all finished next week. She is fast! Gisele is finishing her baby quilt, looking great.


And I was quilting but I also finished this bunny, named Patricia. Do we look symetrical in the picture?

Crazy frames

Since a couple of weeks ago, we organized a kid's farewell party for Mexicans girlfriends. In that occasion we did a craft activity for the children. Each one had a photo frame to decorate and to bring home as a gift. It was so fun that I decided to repeat it at home. This is the result of a nice afternoon where Santiago, Gabriel and me collect some stuff from the playground and combine colors to decorate the frames and these lovely towels hungers.

Marcos locos. Hace algunas semanas atras, organizamos una fiesta infantil de despedida para unas amigas mejicanas. En esa ocasion hicimos una actividad de manualidades para los ninhos. Cada uno tenia un marco de fotos para decorar y llevarselo a casa como regalo. Fue tan entretenido que decidi repetirlo en casa. Este fue el resultado de una agradable tarde en la que Santiago, Gabriel y yo recolectamos algunas cosas desde la plaza de juegos y combinamos colores para decorar los marcos y tambien estos amorosos colgadores de toallas.